Why Exercise Can Make You Fat

He was willing to put himself through hell (that’s pretty much the definition of insanity, right?) to lose some weight and finally get lean.

I gotta admit, his intentions were great.

And I was happy to see him finally put his body first. That’s half the battle right there.

But there was only one problem…

Which I discovered after I asked him one simple question:

How are you going to change your diet?

After a short, blank stare, the answer was just as short.

“I’m not.”

Knowing his typical eating habits are on par with your typical college freshman, I knew there was no way in hell he was even going to lose a pound on this journey, even if he managed to get through the whole Insanity program (which many people don’t).

So why is this the case?

Why do so many of us have this ridiculous belief that we can change our body composition with exercise alone?

Well, to start, we’ve all heard the mantra:

“Weight loss is 80% diet, 20% exercise.”

And I not only agree with this, I think it’s even more extreme…

Something like 95% diet, 5% exercise.

Let me explain my reasoning…

The fact of the matter is, no matter how good your training routine is; no matter how hard you push yourself in the gym; no matter how many plates you’re lifting or kilometres you’re running…

You simply can’t out-train a poor diet.

Period.

But the question is ‘why’…why does this happen?

Let’s first take a look at a study published back in 2006 by researchers Paul Williams and Peter Wood who have been studying the effect of exercise on health since the 1970s.

The two researchers collected detailed information on roughly thirteen thousand habitual runners and then compared the weekly mileage of these runners with how much they weighed from year to year [source].

The results?

Yes, those who ran the most tended to weigh the least, but all of these runners got fatter with each passing year.

That’s right.

Some of these men ran 40 miles per week and still managed to get fatter.

How can that be?

Well, apart from the fact that we are completely misguided on the reasons as to why exactly we get fat, it’s really the media that’s been pushing this thought that exercise can get us lean.

It’s the media and health officials pushing this (false) notion that weight loss is all about energy expenditure vs energy consumption.

That “expending more calories than we consume” actually works.

Here are two things you need to consider:

First, we actually burn very few calories during moderate exercise, which (unfortunately) can easily be undone (and very often is) by even the slightest change in diet.

“A 250-pound man will burn three extra calories climbing one flight of stairs, as Louis Newburgh of the University of Michigan calculated in 1942. “He will have to climb twenty flights of stairs to rid himself of the energy contained in one slice of bread!” -from Gary Taubes’ book Why we get Fat

I’ve tested this myself by tracking my caloric expenditure after a 15 min HIIT session on the treadmill. I burned roughly between 300-400 calories. Not so bad for 15 minutes of work. [I’ll link to the video of the test when it’s up] But, all that hard work can completely (and quickly) be undone with one extra snack that we think we deserve because of, ironically, how hard we worked.

You see, the chances of you not consuming something a little extra after a workout are very slim.

Probably on par with your chances of winning the lottery.

I say this with confidence because (and this leads me to my second point) consuming that something extra is driven by nature.

The fact is, exercise makes us hungry.

Exercise increases our appetite.

“Vigorous muscle exercise usually results in immediate demand for a large meal,” noted Hugo Rony of Northwestern University in 1940. “Consistently high or low energy expenditures result in consistently high or low levels of appetite. Thus men doing heavy physical work spontaneously eat more than men engaged in sedentary occupations.” -from Gary Taubes’ book Why we get Fat

Appetite and, essentially, the amount of food we eat is expected to increase the more we exercise.

That’s the reason exercise alone won’t get you lean.

In fact, if you’re not careful, exercise can make you fatter!

Sure you’ll burn off a bunch of calories with even the most intense of training, but this intensity (and duration) of exercise is strongly correlated with the appetite that follows.

Many of us are not aware of this, or we are and are under the impression that it’s OK to eat whatever we want after we exercise. Some of us don’t want to eat after we train but cave in to mother nature’s design and scuff down way more than we normally would have had we not exercised.

How many people do you know that eat like crazy after a workout?

I can count plenty (me being one of them).

Because it’s all driven by nature.

And people who can’t control this natural state of being (or those who don’t understand how fat tissue is regulated in general) are the ones who are likely to suffer the most. It’s these people that get fatter even with (and, ironically, because of) exercise.

It’s just nature doing its job…

Keeping our energy supplies high in case we need to suffer through a famine or run away from a predator (hopefully neither is the case for you).

Note: I’m in no way implying that exercise is bad. Exercise is very beneficial and necessary for the health and strength of your heart, lungs, brain and is a vital component for building a better body. But, on its own, it’s not very effective for fat loss.

So what are your options?

Exercise alone won’t get you lean.

But exercise combined with the right nutrition plan – one that is focused on foods that don’t trigger fat accumulation – is the optimal way of achieving your fat loss goals.

We have to shift our focus to the quality of foods we are eating, not the quantity.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this, check out my Get Lean (men) or Get Slim (women) training guides.

Note: I’ll be writing a number of posts on foods that trigger fat accumulation in the coming months.

What are your thoughts on exercise and how it relates to getting lean or slim? Do you think it’s possible to achieve the results you want without re-structuring your diet?

Comments

This post makes a great point, and as you say something that is vastly misunderstood. When I started cycling to work, I used to ‘reward’ myself with a big lunch and an afternoon cake, what’s worse is I was convinced my fattening thighs were muscle increase front the cycling – crazy!

These days I work a fair amount of intense cardio (plyometrics) into my workouts for fat burning, afterwards I follow it with drinking a lot of water (this helps stop the hungry feeling) and sometimes a protein shake if its been a heavy workout. Seems to be working for me.

Awesome comment Paul – that’s a great example right there of how we reward ourselves with food after an activity. The worst part is that the cycling happened in the morning (I’m assuming) meaning you had the entire day to reward yourself!

I have a martial arts school in Largo Florida. I have been teaching a Bootcamp class for the last 2 years where I have some very dedicated participants where there fitness levels have greatly improved. But many are doing exactly what your talking about not following a proper diet to get the weightloss they desire. It’s 2 fold eat right and exercise. I feel the eat right is the hardest part. I look forward to your research as I am working on educating myself and clients more in this area.

Hey Ryan, thanks for your comment. I checked out your site and it looks like you have an awesome martial arts academy going on!

And you’re right, the eating right part is definitely the more difficult one. We are not only battling a powerhouse of advertising for processed (i.e. high energy, low nutrition) foods, but we are also battling certain biological principles that make it difficult for (some of) us to make changes to our body composition.

At the end of the day, however, it simply comes down to the fact that majority of us have absolutely no clue as to what actually triggers fat accumulation.

Which is exactly what I’ll be trying to reverse over the next few months!

Thank you. I like how you conduct experiments on fitness trends, like the fasting one you posted recently and provide us with the results. I believe the results that you obtain hold more validity for me because you are an athlete who is already fit and has made exercise a ritual.

In high school I was good friends with a pretty good athlete. He stated because he exercise a lot he can afford to eat McDonald’s every other day or so. He is lean and trim, but what he does not realize is that all the fat will accumulate in his blood vessels and when he gets older, those blood vessels will not function as well, so his health will deteriorate even if he is not fat per se.

You make a good point about eating after exercise. There is interesting work by a guy called Roy Baumeister on ego depletion. Basically, if you run a strenuous exercise routine you will be tired physically, and that fatigue will affect your mental strength to resist comforting foods, which you would’ve been able to resist if you did not exhaust yourself. For those with self-control problems, the best ways is not to buy fatty foods and keep them out of sight if you do after hard exercises, because you will eat way more than you usually would. If you exercise after work like most people, best to pack a banana before you exercise (when you have more self control because afterwards the choice between banana and snickers bar becomes very difficult), eat it after the workout. Go home, avoid the kitchen and get to sleep.

Thanks for your comment Kun. Our bodies change the way they partition our fuel (the foods we eat) as we age. Our genes have some say in how our bodies partition this fuel (what to use as energy and what to store as fat) and some people, like your friend, are fortunate enough to be able to partition the fuel to energy instead of storage. And they have their genes to thank for this more so than their exercise (we all know people who don’t work out but are still lean). However, this does change with age so your friend should be careful.

The ego depletion concept is really cool, I’ve never heard of that. But it does make sense – the more strenuous the exercise the more fatigued you become mentally and the harder it becomes to resist things. I’ll have to check out some of Roy’s work. Any you recommend?

The idea isn’t necessarily to avoid foods or eat less. The idea is to avoid the specific foods that trigger fat accumulation. Like I said, I’ll get more into this in the coming months.

And I agree with your trick of removing items from your house that don’t have any nutritional benefit. We’re human after all – we like to be rebel and we easily succumb to temptations!

Interesting piece about the genes. My girl friend studies nutritional science and coronary disease. What I learned is that the fat will turn into plague in your blood vessels and they become very hard to dislodge as you get older. What is scary is that this will happen in your thirties, not the conventional idea of “old”.

I am not aware of any of Baumeister’s work in popular press right now. The concept of ego depletion was developed in the 1990s. If you have access to university libraries, you can look up Baumeister and O’Leary (1995).

The issue of self-control is more broad, of course. The key to better self-control is not necessarily making your self mentally tougher, though that helps, we all throw in the towel from time to time and indulge our base desires. The sudden loss of control can trigger bad consequences, called the “what the hell effect”. The “what the hell effect” can lead to binge drinking, overeating, and gambling excessively,

To prevent that from happening, we need to realize that we are human, we make mistakes, and we make more mistakes when we are mentally overloaded, stressed and tired. Letting go can be blissful but we will regret it later on. To reduce the number of mistakes we need to avoid situations that trigger the desire and take advantage of our laziness. For example, after my workout I would like to have a chocolate bar, but I only packed bananas and health bars. To get a chocolate bar, I need to go to the store and buy one. But I am also lazy and I rather not go to the store, so I eat the banana. Guess what would happen if the chocolate bar is easily within reach?

Because I am weak and easily tempted, I build a choice path for myself so it would be very difficult for me to make mistakes. When making the choice path, I need to be strong and thinking more about the future than right now. That is why I must do this before I work out and not after. For another real life example, compare what you buy when you shop hungry with what you buy when you are not hungry. Big difference eh?

I’ll check out Baumeister’s work if I can find some. Sounds very interesting.

In terms of self-control and this “what the hell effect” (I like the ring of that), I typically recommend two things (one of which you already mentioned):

1 – Remove items from your environment that you shouldn’t be eating. Remove them from your reach. This has really helped me shape my habits. I’ve removed all the foods from my house that trigger fat accumulation. When they’re around, they’re very difficult to resist because, unfortunately, the foods that make us fat are the ones we crave most. It’s all about creating a ‘temptation-free’ environment.

2 – Stop aiming for perfection. When we try to be perfect, we often fail and give up on our journey. I always recommend to give yourself some room for error. This is why I talk about my 80% rule – I try to eat the right foods 80% of the time. The other 20% ensures that I never feel guilty about ‘treating myself’ and is also physiologically required to ensure that my body doesn’t jump into famine-mode. I talk about this 80% rule here.

I have worked out on and off for over 20 years. Sometimes hard, sometimes not. Last Feb I begin to really dedicate myself to improving my health. I hit the gym 5-6 times a week and do some kind of physical activity on my off days but the biggest factor in the changes I have seen–56 lbs lost and counting, no more sleep apnea, lower blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure– really came from the changes to my diet. Years ago I might have said I eat pretty healthy, I just eat too much. Now I know that was only half true. Beans, greens, and grains is my new mantra when people ask me how I have done it. Keep up the good work.

I agree success comes down to mostly diet, especially when you’re older and glued to an office chair for 8 hours a day. I think only people like Michael Phelps who burn 10,000 calories per day or more can out-exercise a poor diet. I’ve found it beneficial to include a decent amount of low intensity exercise such as walking in my regimen which burns fat but doesn’t rev up my appetite quite as much as moderate intensity exercise.

Hey Alykhan, you’re right in that there are certain people that this may not apply to as stringently. Whenever you’re training to the point where you’re expending 10,000 calories per day, you’re kind of another level lol. Unfortunately for Phelps, if he continues to follow the same nutritional habits he’s built up during his retirement days, he’ll be in trouble quickly.

I completely agree with the low intensity training since it utilizes a particular energy system that is geared towards utilizing fat for fuel and doesn’t increase hunger (as much).

This is a great article that many of us need to read. I myself have experienced how a bad diet renders all intense exercise useless.

However, I think there is an ongoing debate on the topic of Exercise and appetite. Some argue that it’s only lean women who don’t feel hungry after a workout, while others argue that all will be ravenous after a workout. I think this might be a crucial point to bring up, as I don’t always eat after a workout if I don’t have to.

Also, there is controversial advice surrounding what we should do after a workout. Many experts insist that we should have a large meal, while others call for a shake. I have yet to see an expert who advises not to eat.

Within the health/fitness/nutrition industry, there is always debate about everything, as there should be. It’s the nature of science and it’s important that we keep testing things before we assume them to be true (which is kind of, for example, what happened with the fat-causes-heart-disease-so-eat-carbs-instead debacle).

As cliche as it sounds, we’re all different. We’re all ‘wired’ differently and this wiring is primarily driven by our genetic makeup. As I mentioned in a previous comment, some of us are more predisposed to use the fuel from our food as energy while some of us are predisposed to store it as fat. The same can be said with our natural (biological) drive to get hungry after our workout. Some get more hungry, others less. You just have to understand which one you fall under and act accordingly.

Very detailed post! I definitely agree that exercise plays a small role in losing weight. Especially when you use intermittent fasting and are able to keep your calories fairly low. Too much exercise on top of a low calorie diet just causes extreme hunger and eventually food binging. With that said resistance training is a valuable addition to a diet because it will allow you to maintain muscle and burn mostly fat.

And holy hell! You can burn 300-400 calories in 15 minutes? I would love to see that. That seems damn near impossible for anyone but the most fit athletes.

Thanks for the comment Greg! I think intermittent fasting is an excellent way of giving the body a chance to return to a healthy fed-fasted balance.

I agree that exercising more and eating less is not the way to go about getting lean, but it’s what the health administration has led us to believe for decades and people find it hard to believe any alternatives. Hopefully that will change with time.

I think resistance training, low intensity training, and a bit of functional, high intensity training are great for maintaining (and building) muscle and re-teaching your body to use fat as its primary fuel.

PS – I conducted that test a while back so I may have exaggerated a bit (I still have to dig it up somewhere). Way to call me out on that!!!

Very well written post. I once had the same problem I tried insanity, however I did not reap success as fast as I should, because I did not change my diet the way it should have been done. Once I started eating better and continued with the insanity exercise routine fat started to melt off my body. As you said weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercising.

I, personally, think it`s more like 95% diet and 5% exercise, but it`s different from person to person. As long as we understand that principle, we`ll be on the right track. It`s really cool that you saw this personally for yourself and made the necessary change!

We are bad at dealing with problems that have delayed feedback. If you put your finger on a hot stove, you will feel pain and stop immediately. You learn. If you eat a big mac today, the effect does not show up until days or weeks later. When the cause and effect relationship becomes very difficult to determine. You do not learn. Paraphrasing Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein from “Nudge”

That’s an excellent point Kun. Whether you eat a bowl of steamed vegetables for breakfast or two big macs, there will only be a change on the molecular level (since cells regenerate every so often), but there won’t be any immediate change in appearance.

The change in appearance happens gradually and this delayed feedback makes ‘dieting’ a very frustrating activity.

Nudge is a great book. Lots of cool anecdotes. I love the discussion about schools and how the positioning of food items on the menu nudges students to make one purchase over another. Very interesting stuff.

That’s definitely one positive for some people Norma. Exercise helps them live a ‘healthier’ lifestyle. However, most people don’t really understand what ‘healthier’ really is from a nutrition standpoint.

Excellent post! I also think with some people (including myself at times) it becomes more of habit – a mind set that because you have had a really good workout you can now snack on something or even vice versa if you have a snack early on because you are “going to work it off” later …

That’s a great point Faeme – habits do have a lot to do with it. That mindset you speak of is primarily driven by a lack of understanding of how exactly our body uses the fuel we provide it. Thinking that garbage foods can be overcompensated by exercise is definitely the wrong mindset.

From my personal experience, I can say it is such a big % of importance diet vs. exercise (I subscribe everything in the post). I spent years of training accompanied by sandwiches with no results. Changing diet style, less carbs, lots of water, vegetables, superfood (goji, spirulina, seeds…) and keeping the work-out and results are good, though I don’t reduce my weight, but I do reduce the volume (a lot!).

Hey David, thanks so much for sharing your personal experience here. Your change of diet was definitely in the right direction (I like the superfood add-ins). What exactly do you mean by ‘reducing volume’?

Oh OK that’s what I thought. That’s because your body composition is changing. By minimizing carbohydrates you’re burning fat and the resistance training combined with the increased consumption of protein is helping you build muscle. Keep it up!!

This is a really interesting topic for me. In my early thirties, I started running after many years of inactivity (other than walking to and from work). With no change to my diet, I lost probably about 30 pounds and went down a couple of dress sizes within a few months. But, I was on a fairly healthy diet to begin with, which might be why exercise alone worked. I maintained a reasonable weight through continuing running.

In my mid-thirties, I was struck down by an auto-immune disease that caused my kidneys to fail. I was put on steroids, which made me ravenous, and was told I couldn’t do strenuous exercise. I piled on weight.

When I was able to start running again, I found that I just couldn’t use exercise alone to lose weight any more. Nothing would shift it.

Then, a couple of years ago, I decided (on a whim!) to go low-carb, following a paleo style regime, and I lost all the weight and more, with no change to my exercise levels. I am now at a healthy weight and exercise is so much easier without all that extra weight. At 40, I am leaner and fitter than I’ve ever been as an adult, which has made a huge difference to my life and self-confidence. I am now doing intermittent fasting (the 5:2 model, 24 hour fasts twice a week) in the hope that I can protect myself against disease and stay healthy for as long as I can.

I wonder if exercise alone can make a difference when you’re younger, but as you age, it becomes less effective on its own? That is certainly my experience.

Anyway, just wanted to share my experience and also take the opportunity to say that I really enjoy your site. I stumbled upon it by accident while looking for some skipping workouts and have found it both interesting and inspiring. So thanks!

Hey Suzie, thanks so much for sharing your story. There are some really interesting things to learn from it.

Age definitely plays a big factor. What happens generally is when you eat something, your body secretes a hormone insulin (that is primarily correlated with the carbohydrate content of the food – the more carbs consumed, the more insulin secreted). This hormone does many jobs, but one of it’s responsibilities is to partition the food (fuel). It decides what gets stored as fat and what gets used up (burned) for energy. (Our genetics also play a role in this partitioning). As we age (or reach middle-age), we begin to store more and burn up less. This is due to many reasons, one primary one being the fact that, by middle age, most of us are already insulin-resistant. We are constantly over-flooding our bodies with insulin because our cells have stopped sucking up glucose from our blood stream at the same rate. This typically results in other metabolic conditions (like high blood pressure, blood sugar issues, etc.) coming into play which make you more prone to live a sedentary lifestyle (no energy) and eat high energy foods (which really got you to that state in the first place).

It’s good to see you back on your feet though and you’ve done an amazing job of building yourself a better body.

Your story goes to show the importance of choosing the right foods especially as you age.

Hey Darrin, thanks so much for your comment. I guess by ‘exercise determines the amount of muscle you have’ is true for resistance training which definitely brings a lot of benefits. But I completely agree that it is your diet that determines your fat levels. It is very difficult to lose fat by primarily focusing on exercise.

i completely agree and the proof is in my experience.
-from jan 2012-may 2012 i lost 20 pounds with NO cardio. Just weight lifting, fasting, and a lot of grilled chicken.
-from jun 2012-aug 2012 i gain 5 pounds. still lifted weight, but added 2000 miles to my bicycle. Of course, i tried to diet, but it was really tough with all the cardio.
-now with winter approaching, i stop cycing for the year and dropped 5 pounds in september.

It seems that from Jan-May, you lost 20lbs because you were fasting (which stabilizes insulin secretion), and you focused on a protein-based diet rather than a carbohydrate one (you can correct me if my assumption is wrong…). This makes complete sense. By simply lowering your carb intake, you lowered your insulin secretion and this alone drove the fat loss.

From June-Aug, you added more exercise (cardio in the form of cycling), which actually increased your appetite and made ‘dieting’ more difficult. Once you stopped cycling, you didn’t feel as hungry and you once again lost weight.

This article makes some great points. Many people will reward themselves and binge eat after a great workout.

The key to achieving great success in your fitness regimen is to combine diet and nutrition. You should aim for at least 5 days per week of great fitness and nutrition if you want to achieve rapid results!

I couldnt agree more. I have noticed that when I am in “perfection mode” I will end up binge eating on junk after 3 or 4 days. It is always best to do everything in moderation and the 80-20 rule is a great ratio.

I have a question about Insanity. Have you had much experience with it, other than your friend doing the workout routine? It is quite a bit of money to shell out for a program, so what is your opinion on it?

Hey Freddy, I’ve never done Insanity myself, but I have done the P90X program way back in the day (the two programs are very similar). Both are super intense programs that are designed to get you in caloric deficit with very intense workouts. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth the money as you can accomplish the same thing just by incorporating sprinting, jump rope training, and kettlebell training into your routine and changing your nutrient intake accordingly. However, if you’re looking for a structured workout routine, it might be right for you.

I know I am late to the game, but thanks for the great post. I do this too, a few days a week I do cycling followed by power yoga (2 straight hours). When I get home I am starving. I try to eat lean meats and veggies when I get home, but sometimes, I find that my body is so drained I feel like I have to have carbs in order to suppress the hunger and lightheadedness.

I would like to train with your support because i want to improve my body as from last one year lot of fat is gathering around my waist and hips , so please help me with the exercise and the diet about the same as a result a better health be obtained.